Computing devices are routinely used at work, at home, and everywhere else. Computing devices advantageously enable electronic communication, data sharing (e.g., documents, pictures, music, film, etc.), the use of application-specific software, and access to information for electronic commerce through the Internet and other computer networks.
The term computing device generally refers to desktop computers, server computers, laptop computers, mobile computing devices (e.g., personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell-phones, etc.), as well as any other type of computer system. A computing device typically includes a processor and a memory as well as other types of electronic devices, such as, a disk drive.
Disk drives typically employ a moveable head actuator to frequently access large amounts of data stored on a disk. One example of a disk drive is a hard disk drive. A conventional hard disk drive has a head disk assembly (“HDA”) including at least one magnetic disk (“disk”), a disk clamp and a disk fastener to mount the disk to a spindle motor that rapidly rotates the disk, and a head stack assembly (“HSA”) that includes a moveable actuator arm and a head gimbal assembly (“HGA”) with a moveable transducer head for reading and writing data. The HSA forms part of a servo control system that positions the moveable head over a particular track on the disk to read or write information from and to that track, respectively.
Due to the cost competiveness of the disk drive industry, the components of a disk drive need to be assembled in a very precise and cost effective manner. In order to be cost effective, complex components of the disk drive, such as HDAs, disk clamps, disks, spindle motors, HSAs, actuator arms, HGAs, etc., need to be assembled, in a very time effective manner with a very low error rate—even though many of the components require highly precise assembly. Also, many of these types of components often need to be assembled in a very clean fashion in which debris and contamination particles are kept to a minimum. Further, as disk drives are being actively utilized more and more by users as standard hard disk drives, enterprise hard disk drives, moveable external disk drives, and/or for use in smaller computing devices such as laptops and mobile devices (e.g. PDAs, cell-phones, etc.), they are increasingly requiring smaller and smaller components for assembly.
In particular, small-form-factor mobile/enterprise hard disk drives require an assembly process that uses a relatively small head stack assembly (HSA), including an actuator arm and an HGA, which has a tight tolerance, especially in terms of boss alignment. Unfortunately, it is difficult to assemble HGAs to actuator arms utilizing conventional assembly mechanisms because both the HGAs and actuator arms are increasingly becoming smaller in size.
In particular, current manufacturing processes to assemble the HGA with the actuator arm, as they have become increasingly smaller, are causing performance issues, assembly errors, contamination problems, and yield problems. Specifically, many yield problems are occurring because of the rejection of many disk drives due to HGA boss misalignment with the actuator arm during the assembly process. A particular example of a yield problem is that in the assembly of the HSA in which the HGA boss is mounted to the actuator arm, large misalignment errors and jams are occurring resulting in improper assembly and causing the failure of many disk drives. Unfortunately, this is very time consuming for maintenance technicians/engineers to identify the misalignment problems and to redo the assembly process.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a method and system to align a boss of an HGA to a boss hole of an actuator arm for mounting the HGA to the actuator arm to reduce potential alignment issues to thereby decrease disk drive assembly failure, particle contamination, and assembly down time.